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  My wife was much less diffident than me. “Let’s have a look,” she said.

  We did have a look, right away, spurred by Helen’s better-developed sense of urgency. I knew Hannerly well, sitting as it did right in the heart of our practice. It was tiny; a peaceful backwater of a dozen houses, several of them farms, tucked into the sheltering fell-side and strung along a quiet little road that led nowhere in particular—to a neighbouring village some miles away or branching up the hillside to the high country hundreds of feet above. It was beautiful, but not with the chocolate-box prettiness of the tourist villages. No shop, no pub, no streetlights. To me it was a secret corner of Yorkshire, a little tableau in stone of that stern and lovely county.

  The doctor who was leaving showed us round. The house was modest but charming, resting on the face of its own field, a steeply sloping pasture where sheep grazed. An extensive lawn stretched down to a swiftly running beck that widened into a pond where a score of mallard ducks floated serenely and great willows bent their branches towards the water.

  Afterwards, in the May sunshine, Helen and I climbed with our dog behind the house, up the grassy bank past trees heavy with blossom, then over a stile to a lofty green plateau that seemed to overlook the whole world.

  We flopped onto the grass and from our eyrie we looked down past the sheep unhurriedly cropping the grass to the house lying below us, backed by a great crescent of tree-covered hillside with the rim of the high moorland peeping above the trees. This majestic sweep curved away to a headland where a tall cliff dominated the scene, a huge friendly slab of rock gleaming in the sunshine. Away in the other direction, over the roofs of the hamlet, there was a heart-lifting glimpse of the great wide plain of York and the distant hills beyond.

  After the cold spring the whole countryside had softened and the air had a gentle warmth, rich with the scents of May blossom and the medley of wild flowers that speckled the grass. In a little wood to our right a scented lake of bluebells flooded the shady reaches of the trees.

  As we sat there three squirrels hopped one after another from a tall sycamore and, pursued optimistically by fat Dinah, flitted, quick and light as air, over the green and disappeared behind a rise, leaving her effortlessly behind.

  Helen voiced my thoughts. “Living here would be heaven.”

  We almost ran down the hill to the house and closed the deal with the doctor. There were none of the traumas of our previous house-buying efforts; a shake of the hand and it was over.

  Helen’s words were prophetic. It was a sad moment when we had to leave the happy memories of Rowan Garth behind, but once we were installed in High Field we realised that living in Hannerly was heaven indeed. At times I could hardly believe our luck. To be able to sit at our front door drinking tea in the sunshine and watching the mallards splashing and diving in our pond with the hillside before us aflame with gorse and, way above, that changeless cliff face smiling down. And to live always in a quiet world where the silence at night was almost palpable.

  Picking my torch-lit way on Dinah’s nocturnal strolls, I could hear nothing except the faintest whisper of the beck murmuring its eternal way under the stone bridge. Sometimes on these nightly walks a badger would scuttle across my path, and under the stars I might see a fox carrying out a stealthy exploration of our lawn.

  One morning on an early call just after dawn, I surprised two roe deer in the open and watched enthralled as they galloped at incredible speed across the fields and, clearing the fences like steeplechasers, plunged into the woods.

  Here in Hannerly, just a few miles from Darrowby, there was the ever-present thrill for Helen and me that we were living on the edge of the wild.

  Chapter 43

  “BY GOD, AH’S SWEATIN’!” Albert Budd gasped as he collapsed his sixteen stones onto a chair and wiped his face. Then he gave me an anguished look. “And ah know ah’m goin’ to start fartin’ in a minute.”

  “What!” I stared at him in alarm. We had just finished a set of quadrilles at Calum’s newly formed Highland dancing club in Kayton village hall, and I was puffing, too, as I sat down next to the young farmer. “Really? Are you sure?”

  “Aye, nothin’ surer. When Calum roped me in for this dancin’ I didn’t know there’d be all this jumpin’ and jogglin’, and I’ve just had a bloody good feed with three Yorkshire puddin’s. This is murder!”

  I didn’t know what to say but I tried to be reassuring. “Just sit quietly for a bit—I expect you’ll be all right.”

  Albert shook his head. “No chance! I can feel it comin’ on. He’s a bugger, is Calum. He came in and grabbed me as soon as I’d finished me dinner. Me mother allus gives me a special do on a Wednesday night after I get back from Houlton market—a few good slices o’ beef, sprouts and taties and, like I said, three Yorkshire puddin’s and a smashin’ spotted Dick and custard. I’d had a few pints at the Golden Lion, too, and I was just goin’ to put me feet up for half an hour when he walked into the house. Said I had to come with him and I thought the dancin’ would be like Victor Sylvester on the television.”

  The stab of pity I felt for the poor chap’s predicament was sharpened by the fact that everybody else in the hall was having a wonderful time. Calum’s persuasive energies had obviously been successful and there was a good turnout of the local people forming up for an eightsome reel as the gramophone poured out Jimmy Shand’s foot-twitching beat.

  Helen and I had gladly fallen in with the dancing idea and this was our third visit. With my Glasgow upbringing I had done it all before at school and parties, but I was rusty and had forgotten some of the steps. However, to the majority of the company—farmers, schoolteachers, doctors, and a good cross-section of the local people—the whole business was strange and new. But definitely fun to learn, and at times the loud laughter almost drowned the music.

  I could understand that Albert didn’t find it funny at all. He was about twenty-five, living with a doting mother who looked after him far too well, and he was one of the many young farmers who had formed a friendship with the ebullient new vet and were eager to join him in his activities, but this was definitely not his scene.

  I had often noted that there weren’t many fat chaps among the farmers but Albert was a striking exception. Six feet three, beacon-faced and with an enormous belly that he somehow managed to carry round his milking, hay-making and other farming chores. His appetite was legendary in the district and he was a constant menace to those carvery restaurants where you could put down a set amount and eat as much as you liked.

  He looked acutely uncomfortable at this moment, resting his hands on his stomach and gazing at me with worried eyes.

  I could sympathise with him. I had seen his streaming face bouncing aimlessly above the crowd in the quadrilles and there was no doubt he must be suffering.

  “Ah tell ye this, Jim,” he went on. “If I have to do any more jumpin’ around I’ve had it. I’m goin’ to start fartin’, and when ah do ah can’t stop!”

  “Oh dear, I’m sorry, Albert. It’s a bit awkward for you with all these ladies around.”

  I hadn’t meant to be cruel but he stared at me in horror.

  “Oh, ’ell!” he groaned, then, “by God, I’m startin’! I’m gettin’ out—I’m off ’ome!”

  He was about to rise when the curate’s young wife came over.

  “Really, Mr. Budd,” she said with mock disapproval, “we can’t have you sitting against the wall when we need a man for this reel.”

  Albert gave her a ghastly smile. “Nay…nay…thank ye. I was just…”

  “Oh, come now, you mustn’t be shy. Most of us are still learning.” She put out her hand and Albert gave me a last despairing glance before he was led onto the floor.

  His eyes registered acute anxiety as he was stationed between the curate’s wife and a pretty young teacher from Darrowby Infants’ School, but there was no escape. The gramophone sounded the opening chord, they bowed, then they were off, skipping round hand in hand one w